Wild Plant Fiber Processing and Technological Organization: Holocene Perishable Artifact Production in the Bonneville Basin

Summary

Perishable artifact analysis in the Great Basin has often focused on whole or complete pieces to address questions regarding broad social groupings and environmental adaptation. In the Great Basin, past populations targeted distinct ecological zones to tend and gather wild plant species for the manufacture of perishable material culture, and by focusing on technological organization and the manufacturing process, there is great potential to better understand how these activities contributed to organizing smaller-scale social groupings, social interaction, and environmental interaction in fragmentary artifacts. This presentation will provide an analysis of early through late Holocene Bonneville Basin museum perishable assemblages, and the Bonneville Estates Rockshelter and Four Siblings Rockshelter collections at Texas A&M University, including basketry, cordage, netting, snares, manufacturing debris, and other miscellaneous artifacts. Focusing on the technological organization and the manufacturing process, from initial wild plant fiber processing to artifact construction of sites around the Bonneville Basin, this analysis yields unique interpretations of Great Basin social and environmental interaction.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Precolumbian Textile Tools and Technologies: Case Studies from North America and Mesoamerica

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16106